Striking teachers, school staff, and supporters march through downtown Chicago on the ninth day of the Chicago Teachers Union strike on October 25, 2019. (Photo by Max Herman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
By Gregory William
On November 1, over 30,000 teachers and school workers returned to work after an 11-day strike that won them important concessions from the City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools. This strike was carried out by the 25,000 member Chicago Teachers Union and 7,500 education workers from the Service Employees Union (SEIU) Local 73. The solidarity between the two unions shows the way forward for the working class: when we unite, we are stronger. Though SEIU Local 73 settled three days before CTU (winning up to 40% wage increases among other gains), they didn’t leave the teachers’ picket lines until CTU settled.
The unions put forward big, political demands that go beyond education. For example, these unions have taken a leading role in the fight for affordable housing in the city of Chicago. Commentators have noted that it is unconventional for unions to fight for this kind of policy change during contract negotiations, but union members around the country may be taking note. These Chicago union workers understand that the issues affecting the working class cannot be separated from one another. We cannot address problems in education if we do not solve the affordable housing crisis. Chicago unions are keeping the pressure on the city to respect the basic rights of its residents to housing, health, and dignity.
From top to bottom: Santiago, Chile, October 25, 2019; Baghdad, Iraq, October 25, 2019; Beirut, Lebanon, October 24, 2019; Algiers, Algeria on October 29, 2019.
Ukrainian troops with the NATO flag, the flag of the Azov battalion, and the Nazi swastika.
By Joseph Rosen
Instead of charging Trump with sexual assault or incitement of hate crimes or crimes against humanity, the Democrats have centered their impeachment inquiry around the allegation that Trump withheld nearly $400 million worth of military aid to Ukraine in order to press the current government for dirt on his potential rival, Joe Biden. Practically no voice among the capitalist owned media has been raised to point out the fact that this aid is destined for a military with openly fascist Neo-Nazis militias in its ranks.
The recent history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine incriminates both Biden and Trump
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, the U.S. ruling class has been determined to gain unfettered access to the human and natural resources of the former socialist republics. But Ukraine’s longstanding commercial and cultural ties to a sovereign Russia have been a barrier to U.S. domination.
Eager to replace a relatively Russian-aligned government with one that would more readily yield to U.S. colonial desires, the U.S. State Dept. and CIA leapt at the chance to lend their support to an insurrection against the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2013/2014. That the 2014 coup was carried out by violent Neo-Nazi gangs did not bother Obama, Clinton, or Biden in the least. All they wanted was a Ukraine “open for U.S. business.”
Since the coup, state companies have been sold off at fire-sale liquidations and the country’s rich farmland has been raided by transnational agribusiness firms like Monsanto. Mass layoffs have caused a surge in unemployment. The government has deployed fascist street gangs to repress any resistance to these widespread attacks on workers.
Per the demands of the U.S., the post-coup government has pledged to phase out much of its business with Russia. More alarmingly, they have taken steps towards entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which is carrying out war games closer and closer to Russia’s borders.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Olesky Honcharuk speaking at a Neo-Nazi rally on Oct. 13.
End all U.S. military aid to the fascist Ukrainian government
At least $1.5 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been used to supply the fascist Ukrainian government with arms and military equipment since 2014. This “aid” supports Neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov battalion who have welcomed American white supremacist terrorists into their training grounds. The government of Ukraine’s capital Kiev officially sanctions patrols by the Neo-Nazi militia C14, who have carried out pogroms against Roma communities and violent attacks on LGBT people.
Since 2014 more than 13,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced in a war on the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk, both formed in the Donbass region after seceding from Ukraine in the wake of the right-wing coup.
Because the Donbass remains a bulwark against the building up of offensive U.S./NATO forces, they receive limited support from the Russian government. But the main reason that the people of the Donbass continue their armed struggle against the fascists is that they reject the privatizations, pension cuts, and plant closures that Kiev is carrying out on behalf of the U.S. and E.U. capitalists in charge of the International Monetary Fund.
Workers in the U.S. don’t have any interest in common with gangsters like Biden or Trump, much less with the war profiteers or bankers that they work for. The capitalists’ recent record in Ukraine shows that they regard fascism as just another means to exploit and steal from working and oppressed people. If the U.S. ruling class doesn’t shrink from arming swastika-wearing soldiers in the Ukraine, they’re not likely to withhold arms from the fascists at home. We workers must organize to root out and smash the fascists wherever they exist; we can’t leave it up to any capitalist government to do that for us.
After Trump announced U.S. forces would withdraw from northern Syria, the House of Representatives voted on a non-binding resolution against it. Although Republicans and Democrats seem divided on many issues, both are parties of endless war for profit who voted 354-60 to continue the illegal war in which 400,000 people have died since 2011.
Trump is a warmonger who just approved sending 1,800 more troops to Saudia Arabia, a U.S. ally carrying out a genocidal war against Yemen. Trump has pledged to keep troops in Syria to protect oil fields—the only thing the U.S. capitalists care about in the Middle East.
Pulling troops from Syria is not a bad thing. By attacking him on this, the Democrats are trying to be more right-wing than the war-crazed Trump.
Many progressives are confused. Hasn’t the U.S. military been protecting the Kurds in Syria? The answer is a clear “no” if we look at the big picture.
The Syrian Kurds have been attacked by Turkish forces, but Turkey is a Washington ally. The far-right Turkish regime represses workers and carries out constant attacks against the Kurdish people, all the while receiving more U.S.-made weapons than any country besides Israel or the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).
Washington has supported the Turkish state for decades. So close is the relationship that the U.S. government has at least 50 nuclear warheads in Turkey. These stockpiles go back to 1962, when the U.S. government began positioning nuclear weapons there to threaten the Soviet Union.
But what about the “crazy militias” the corporate press says attacked the Kurds? The U.S. government has backed 21 out of 28 of these groups. Most are off-shoots of Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra, armed and trained by the CIA and Pentagon. Washington used these groups to undermine the elected government in Syria and carry out atrocities throughout the country, not just against the Kurds.
The U.S. has fomented war in the country for eight years, but now that Syria has been restored to the control of the Syrian government, there is finally a prospect of peace. The Kurds have joined forces with the Syrian Army. There is no longer any pretext for the U.S. to be there.
It’s right that workers are angry over Turkey’s military attacks, and so our demand should be that Washington withdraw all support for Turkey, ending all arms sales and military aid to that murderous far-right regime.
Workers are rising up against the super rich in countries around the world, including Haiti. It’s our turn, New Orleans! Let’s take to the streets!
On Oct 13, thousands of Haitians marched into Port-au-Prince demanding the resignation of U.S.-backed right-wing President Jovenel Moïse. The terms of a 2018 IMF loan that stipulated reduced oil subsidies has led to massive fuel shortages and higher fuel prices. Moïse has also been accused of stealing money from Venezuela’s fuel assistance program, PetroCaribe. But the protests are about more than just fuel shortages. Centuries of colonial violence and imperialist repression—including nearly two decades of U.S. military occupation and multiple U.S. sponsored coups—have made the Republic of Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
The protests include workers, peasants, students and teachers—all yearning for a life of dignity, for access to education, housing, food, and healthcare but also for national independence, free from the clutches of U.S., French, and Canadian imperialists. As the first Black nation to have achieved liberation from colonial control, the people of Haiti bear a history not only of extreme oppression, but also revolutionary struggle.
A woman protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Jun. 10, 2019. Protesters continue to fill the streets, demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moise.
In Ecuador, similar mass protests have forced the government to concede to some of the people’s demands. After President Lenin Moreno announced that he would eliminate oil subsidies per the terms of an IMF loan, hundreds of transit workers went on strike. Thousands of other people from diverse sectors of society—women’s groups, Indigenous peoples, trade unions, social organizations, and Marxist groups—took to the streets to protest not just the latest IMF deal, but all of Moreno’s reactionary policies. Indigenous peoples lead this movement. Moreno deployed riot police and the army to repress the protesters.
The U.S. government supports the Moreno government, which is unsurprising, given its record of backing reactionary rulers in other countries to maintain its own political and economic supremacy.
Moreno has increased poverty and inequality by slashing funding for energy, public infrastructure, healthcare, and education. The IMF loan also mandated 20% cuts to public employees’ salaries, the elimination of workplace safety regulations, privatization of pensions, cuts to wages, and layoffs of up to 140,000 public employees. But the people of Ecuador are rising up against this program of austerity. After weeks of militant protests, Moreno announced that he would restore fuel subsidies.
Tens of thousands of Ecuadorians protest the austerity government of President Moreno in Quito, Oct. 9.
The mass movement in Ecuador continues, just as in Haiti. Both nations are ruled by reactionary presidents with ties to the imperialist U.S. government, which has only one mission: to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. As workers, we have an invaluable lesson to learn from the people of Haiti and Ecuador, who show us the power that lies in working class unity. We must come together and build our own militant workers movement from the ground up. Our oppressors will never hand us our own liberation; we must seize it for ourselves.
The World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are the financial arms of U.S. imperialism. Just as the Pentagon pursues the aims of U.S. imperialism with war and occupation, the WB and the IMF achieve those ends through extortion.
These institutions were set up to keep colonized countries from developing by undermining their domestic industries and making them economically dependent on the U.S. Debtor nations are forced to export mainly plantation crops and to rely on the U.S. for grain and food imports. The U.S. government wields this dependency as an economic weapon, imposing sanctions against any nation (like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran) it perceives as a threat to its dominance in the global capitalist world order. Sanctions are an act of economic warfare that starve and impoverish workers.
IMF loans have obscenely high interest rates and include ‘structural adjustment programs’ that force debtor nations to privatize major industries and services and impose austerity measures on working and oppressed people. These include regressive taxes on the poor, cuts to wages, layoffs, and the destruction of labor unions.
The IMF is as anti-democratic as it’s anti-labor. The U.S. has sole veto power in both institutions and loans disproportionately to countries with repressive governments. The U.S. did not loan to Chile when it was governed by democratically-elected President Allende—that is, until he was overthrown by a U.S. backed military coup and the authoritarian Pinochet regime came to power. Under the military dictatorship of Somoza, Nicaragua received generous loans, but when the revolutionary Sandinista government rose to power, the U.S. imposed a trade embargo against the country.
The WB and IMF perpetuate the legacy of colonialism
So called “developing nations” suffer from poverty because they have been purposefully underdeveloped by centuries of colonial control. U.S. financial elites use the WB and the IMF to trap these nations in a vicious cycle of unsustainable debt. But the workers of the world have always been opposed to these heinous institutions. Since 2018 alone, the people of Argentina, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Haiti, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Tunisia, and other countries have taken to the streets in protest. They refuse to be repressed by institutions designed only to protect the rich.
Working class people, who are most directly impacted by the IMF and WB, do not currently have a say regarding their policies. Until the IMF and the WB are collectively controlled by workers, they will continue to be weaponized by the rich to further oppress the global working class.
The insurance rates in Louisiana are outrageous. Car and home insurance rates are nearly the highest in the country, and if you live in New Orleans, you also need flood insurance. If you’re poor or oppressed, you are punished doubly, since nearly all high elevation land is populated by rich people, a feature of the city established during the violent conquering and settling of the city landscape. Just as the landscape of New Orleans reflects the oppressive rule of the capitalists, the insurance rates also reflect their tight grip on power.
Before James Donelon (R), the latest politician to take the seat of Insurance Commissioner in Louisiana, there were three politicians: Doug Green (D), Jim Brown (D), J. Robert Wooley (D) all of whom went to prison for taking bribes/money laundering. Given that the Insurance Commissioner controls insurance rates and allows/bars insurance companies from operating in Louisiana, whoever serves in this position sits as the gatekeeper to insurance companies. So that the insurance companies can suck as much out of Louisiana ratepayers as possible, they keep plenty of cash on hand to “grease the palms” of the commissioner.
Whether or not Donelon has taken illegal bribes has yet to be revealed. That he has accepted more than $680,000 in legal bribes—aka campaign donations—from insurance companies and agents since 2015 ought to be a scandal.
Donelon, who hates workers, has even had the guts to say that car insurance rates are so high because of all the uninsured/underinsured drivers. But the lies don’t add up: nationwide, Louisiana ranks twentieth for the number of uninsured drivers, and yet we have the second highest rates in the country. How could working people even afford to have more insurance when the ruling class steals from of us left and right?
Insurance rates do not fall out of the sky. They are not “mathematically determined” nor are they set by any other scientific means. The reason so much of our hard-earned money is stolen each month is because the capitalist owned media conceal the true nature of the capitalist government. The news media would have us believe that Santa or the Easter Bunny sets these rates as much as they avoid the facts of this important issue.
The people ought to have the final say in how prices are set, but we workers have to fight for better conditions or we will continue to be taken advantage of. No more closed door negotiations and off-shore bank accounts! No more politicians in the pockets of the insurance companies! All power to the people!
Eight Louisiana municipalities have been put under the control of a “fiscal administrator.” As many as fifteen others are being considered for take over.
By Joseph Rosen and Nath Clarke
Across rural Louisiana, villages and towns have seen their elected governments replaced with the dictatorship of a “fiscal administrator” appointed by a committee run by Attorney General Jeff Landry. Without the input of any of the towns’ residents, these “administrators” are authorized to lay off public workers, raise fees, and make cuts to education, utilities, and other public services—all in order to make payments on the debts incurred by past municipal governments.
The Fiscal Review Committee is made up of multi-millionaire Attorney General Jeff Landry, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera who has spent years trying to cut Medicaid funding, and State Treasurer John Schroder who is bought off by the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry, a group of ultra-rich CEOs and corporate bosses.
Every year, the Fiscal Review Committee declares towns, villages, and cities “financially unstable”—which can mean anything from the failure of a city government to pay back bank loans to a failure to provide an audit. Eight towns are currently under the rule of a fiscal administrator; as many as fifteen are being eyed by Purpera.
Clayton, Louisiana has been under the thumb of a fiscal administrator since 2017. Because their water system is not “profitable enough,” the Fiscal Review Committee is suggesting they increase the monthly water rate by $10. In a town where 40% of residents live below the poverty line, an extra $10 monthly expense can send a family down the path of ruin. Elsewhere, the committee has proposed cuts to public hospitals which have often been left to ruin for years already, cuts to public schools, and water shutoffs for entire villages. In Clarence, Louisiana, the Fiscal Review Committee recommended increasing traffic fines and fees in a village where fines and forfeitures already comprise more than half of the village budget.
Under the capitalist mode of production, the infrastructure that supports a community of workers is left to rot as soon as capitalists find another place to get their profits from. This applies to cities like Detroit and Flint whose workers produced billions of dollars of wealth for the owners of auto manufacturing plants just as it’s true for Bogalusa, once home to the most productive sawmill in the world. The workers of these cities now live under “emergency managers” where even the elected members of the capitalist government do not have a say over the direct appointees of the banks. Their “fiscal administrators” demand that the working and oppressed residents not only fend for themselves but pick up the tab for the debts incurred by their previous capitalist rulers. Add to this the cost of living with the environmental ravages left by capitalist exploitation.
Workers around the world are standing up to free themselves from the stranglehold of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that demand that workers sacrifice their pensions, their jobs, their land and their security so that their capitalist governments can keep an open line of credit with the imperialist banks.
Just as workers across the world from Haiti to Chile have stood up to the dictatorship of the banks, so must Louisiana workers rise to defend their right to a life of dignity. Louisiana workers, demand your freedom: Cancel the debts! Fire the fiscal administrators!
Protesters picket outside SASOL, a billion-dollar industrial chemical company polluting Mossville, LA.
From South Africa to Louisiana, Mossville to New Orleans
By Sanashihla
Saturday, October 19, Residents of Mossville, LA, and Gordon Plaza, New Orleans, LA, had an opportunity to learn about each others struggles against the environmental racism that the capitalist system uses to divide, exploit and extract the labor, resources, and land of workers. This exchange occurred during a documentary screening of Mossville: When Great Trees Fall in New Orleans.
Mossville is a small Black community on the outskirts of Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish. The residents have been fighting against SASOL, a billion-dollar industrial chemical company.
SASOL got its start in South Africa. Rather than the people of South Africa benefiting from the abundance of resources that the land offers, the country has been a haven for white supremacist capitalists who exploit and pollute with complete disregard for the harm done to the Black indigenous people of the land.
A report about the harm done in South Africa, “Burning Coal,” stated that, “Under colonialism and apartheid, black South Africans were deliberately put in the way of pollution: at work and at home, as is evident in the experiences of both workers in the dirty industrial area of Ferrobank, South Africa and residents next to it in Ackerville, South Africa.” This is the same approach that capitalist chemical industries take right here in the state of Louisiana.
Despite SASOL forcing a $21.2-billion-dollar expansion upon the people, they only offered Mossville residents crumbs to move. Residents were forced to leave their “paid off” homes to incur debt in the process of finding another place to live. Some residents were even left homeless because of the ever-increasing cost of homes.
Residents are fighting illnesses, having been subjected to extreme pollution from the 14 petrochemical plants surrounding them already.
New Orleans is facing its own case of environmental racism. New Orleans East faces a $700 million polluting gas plant, and in the Upper 9th Ward Desire Neighborhood, the City of New Orleans built homes in Gordon Plaza on the Agriculture Street Landfill.
Mr. Jesse, a resident of Gordon Plaza, let the audience know about the residents’ fight for fully funded relocation. He explained that according to the Tumor Registry Report, the Gordon Plaza neighborhood— New Orleans’ own Cancer Alley— has the second highest cancer rate in Louisiana.
Residents are fighting for a long overdue fully funded relocation and cannot afford to be compensated with crumbs. The residents have put their working-class life savings into their homes; they bought into the so-called American Dream only for it to become a horrific nightmare.
From Gordon Plaza and Death Alley to South Africa, communities around the world are teaching each other about their struggles and learning we must band together to fight the common enemy of the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses workers and residents wherever they rule. We must say NO MORE!
Residents are asking for your help by telling everyone you know about this injustice. They invite you to hit the streets with them. You can call Mayor LaToya Cantrell at (504) 658-4900 and (504) 658-4945. You can email her at mayor@nola.gov to express support for the residents’ demands and REMIND the mayor that when she was running for office, she PLEDGED to use the city’s resources to ensure the residents of New Orleans would live in a safe and healthy environment. Now is the time!
The capitalists’ media outlets and their educational institutions boast that the United States is a bastion of democracy uniquely endowed with the duty to spread its democratic vision around the world, often by military force.
But for working people, our so-called democracy is a sham. This becomes clear as day when we examine the workings of the New Orleans City Council (NOCC). When we vote for a city councilperson or a mayor, we assume that they will have the interests of all citizens in mind when they make decisions that affect the whole citizenry. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A favorite trick of the capitalists is to have mayors or city council members cede their decision-making power to non-elected boards such as the City Planning Commission (CPC). Unlike elected politicians, these boards don’t have to pretend to answer to the electorate. They openly govern on behalf of the capitalists at the expense of the working majority.
For example, the RTA board doesn’t include hospitality workers or drivers and mechanics; the Sewerage and Water Board doesn’t have laborers or renters making decisions. The capitalists and their lackeys make all the decisions while shielding the council and mayor from criticism for their unpopular decisions.
Who are the nine members of the CPC who decide on life and death issues like the expansion of the Orleans Parish Prison or a variance to build the Hard Rock Café Hotel?
Nolan Marshall is a VP of External Affairs and Policy for the New Orleans Business Alliance, an organization of city politicians and rich capitalists dedicated to “urban development”, aka gentrification. Katie Witry owns a real estate firm and Kathleen Lunn is a real estate broker. Robert Steeg heads a law firm that specializes in real estate transactions. Kyle Wedberg is a former administrator with the Recovery School District which pushed the charter school system on New Orleans. Lorey Flick heads an engineering firm with several multi-million dollar building contracts in New Orleans. Sue Mobley is a non-profit professional who specializes in projects funded by the Ford Foundation.
It’s clear that no one on this board represents the working class. There are no renters or hospitality workers, no one to stop the relentless gentrification of working class neighborhoods and the pushing of working people further and further from their jobs, no one who is forced to rely on an underfunded and mismanaged transit system.
And yet, the CPC “makes recommendations” regarding a variety of land use laws and codes that affect working class people including the Master Plan, the anti-worker gentrification plan created by the capitalists after Katrina. While the CPC supposedly only makes recommendations, it may approve, modify or deny applications, and its recommendations are rarely opposed by the City Council.
The City Planning Commission (CPC) was also asked to recommend whether or not to expand Orleans Parish Prison. That the city with the highest incarceration rate in the world, a crumbling infrastructure and a budget which spends only 3% on children and families wants more jail cells is itself obscene. That the decision is left up to an unelected board shows that our democracy exists only for the rulers and their flunkies. It’s only because of public outrage they backed off the recommendation to expand the jail.
It’s time for New Orleans, the Mayor and the City Council to stop governing behind closed doors where the whims of the capitalists give sway over the needs of us workers. Abolish the CPC and all other non-elected boards!
